As a former side hustler, the one of the common questions I would get asked was: How do you organize your business to balance work and life? And the truth is, that you don't there is no such thing as work-life balance, but you can strive to have what I like to call a healthy work-life blend. My business is my life and my life is my business, therefore everything is intertwined. I never really "clock out" and my ideas and mind are always "on." After a whole bunch of years of doing a mediocre job, I finally figured out a system to organize my business and not feel overwhelmed. You can get a quick overview in the video below, or the entire outline within the post.

This is you: you have been creating amazing content for your blog for quite a while now: months, maybe even years, but you’re still clueless on how to make that a viable business. You don’t know what to sell, and you aren’t even sure if you want the responsibility of selling anything at all. You’re a content creator. You want to write, make YouTube videos, teach courses, design shirts etc. without the hassle of having to constantly market yourself and hustle for every dollar. You my friend, want to make passive income.

You've had these ideas in your head, and you need to figure out how to build your personal brand to execute it. There's so much information on personal branding out there that it probably left you overwhelmed and even more clueless than when you started. I feel you. At times, it can be so discouraging to see your peers breeze by you into success as you struggle to build your brand. Before I allow you to keep feeling sorry for yourself, let's analyze why they breezed by you in the first place. Are they smarter than you or are they outworking you? It's easy for you to get into a rut about your lack of progress, but you're probably the reason you're in the rut to begin with. Yep, I said it.

Managing my side hustle was really challenge until last year. My career took a few unexpected turns, with two layoffs and too many resignations that I’m ashamed to mention. The inconsistency of full-time work led me to dive into entrepreneurship while I searched for my next opportunity. Each time that I settled back into the comfort of a full-time role, I found myself struggling to find balance between my responsibilities. I have constantly leveraged my personal brand to land awesome jobs, but it felt like my business was neglected the moment I logged onto my company’s Outlook email. I wondered: is the side hustle dying; is it impossible to do both well?

Black and Latina women have been launching businesses at a record pace. However, there’s more to that than what meets the eye. Businesses are also failing each day, and the startup landscape has a specific set of challenges for women of color. You know that I keep it real with y’all, and I’m so glad that I was able to partner with Capital One this past weekend as they powered digitalundivided’s BIG Demo Day so that I could bring these real stories and solutions to you. My mission has been to teach you how grow and expand your businesses and brands through my blog, but this event was on another level! It was so inspiring to see young women of color with thriving businesses. You can catch the demos and fireside chats on digitalundivided’s facebook page.

In order for you to successfully work with brands and land content partnerships, you need to understand what brands and publicists find valuable and what they are focusing on in a particular season. For example, by reading social media blogs you will notice that in 2017 brands will be focusing on real-time video content. Therefore, you would pitch a content partnership focused on a Snapchat or Instagram Live takeover, not a sponsored blog post. Staying updated on industry trends will help you craft pitches and provide brands the content they want and need most. You have to fill a void. Lucky for you, 2017 is the year of the micro-influencer.

When someone searches your name, what shows up? Whether you are building a brand for your career or a business, you need a website. However, not all sites are created equal, and they shouldn't be. Depending on the purpose of your site, personal or professional, there are going to be some key components that you don't want to overlook. Online portfolios and websites are both marketing tools that will attract or repel your audience depending on the design, presentation, and content. A professional online presence - if developed properly - gives you a competitive advantage over your peers. This blog post will teach you everything you need to know to build a next-level website.